


my heart is beating in a different way

by twistedsky



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-02-19 23:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2406620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsky/pseuds/twistedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brief Melinda/Grant/Jemma, backdated for clarity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my heart is beating in a different way

**Author's Note:**

> This was written around December, and therefore certain characters are no longer canon compliant.  
> The lovely Jan requested that it be posted here, and so it is!

He falls in love with her in bits and pieces, seemingly slowly, except the pieces seem to fall into place so quickly that he’s overwhelmed by it, drowning in the flood of feelings that overwhelm him body, heart, and soul.  
  
She scares him the way they all do—with kindness and acceptance, and love, which he doesn’t deserve, not really.  
  
He doesn’t know when it started. Maybe sometime before jumping out of an airplane to save her, maybe after, maybe at that exact moment something sparked inside of him.  
  
In the end, it doesn’t matter.  
  
He catches himself watching her far too often, and the fact that no one notices or comments is either a godsend, or pure luck, because he’s sure he’s obvious about it.  
  
He doesn’t trust love. (He trusts sex, he trusts what he has with Melinda, who doesn’t expect anything of him, who doesn’t need anything more than exactly what he can offer.)  
  
He doesn’t believe in it wholeheartedly the way some people do, he doesn’t give pieces of himself to others, because he knows more often than not that you never get those pieces back, and you’re only left with more and more emptiness.  
  
Acknowledging his feelings for her, he does the only sensible thing he can do.  
  
He does nothing.  
  
~~  
  
“I’ve beaten you again,” Jemma declares solemnly, but there’s a twinkle in her eye, a sparkle that says yes, _I won._   _I beat you._  
  
“We could outlaw Scrabble,” Skye suggests, glaring at the game on the table in front of them. “We could try something a little more fair than a word game. Maybe Chutes and Ladders.”  
  
Jemma claps her hands. “Oh, that sounds fun.”  
  
“Or Candyland,” Skye continues, deciding that ignoring her is probably the best course of action, because anything Jemma wants to play is probably a bad idea.  
  
“Also an excellent idea,” Fitz agrees. “But she loves that one too. She adores board games.”  
  
“Maybe we should try something else altogether,” Coulson suggests with a frown.  
  
“We’re going to play Scrabble until someone other than Simmons wins,” Grant declares. “Then we can find something else.”  
  
“I am undefeated, dear sir,” Jemma says archly. “It will be a cold day in hell indeed.”  
  
“Then I hope you packed a parka,” Grant states. “Because I’m about to rain down on you.”  
  
Jemma laughs. “You can try.”  
  
A part of him never wants to win, because there’s something so lovely about the way she gloats—her eyes sparkle, and she seems so happy, and he wishes he could make those moments last forever.  
  
~~  
  
There’s something between Fitz and Simmons, and he’d be blind not to see it.  
  
It’s hard to argue with the looks they share, and the way they’re always on the same page, as if they’re connected with a bond deeper than anything he’s even felt.  
  
She made him a  _sandwich_  for a mission. If Grant made Melinda a sandwich, she might actually laugh at him, and he’s never actually seen her laugh before. He just thinks that would be enough to push her over the edge.  
  
Fitz and Simmons are practically married as it is, and although he’s never seen them share more than casual public affection, he can  _feel_ it.  
  
He doesn’t have any actual proof, but he doesn’t  _need_  proof.  
  
He can feel the jealousy burning through them whenever he’s around them, and while he tries to keep things light and airy, he feels himself regressing far beyond who he was before he met these people.  
  
They’d cracked him open like an egg, and now he’s struggling to put the pieces back together, but this isn’t a nursery rhyme, it’s real life. He isn’t humpty dumpty, and it isn’t easy to put yourself back together again when you’re hemorrhaging  _feelings_.  
  
It feels so easy to tease and smile—so much easier than it’s ever been in his life. Teasing Jemma—Simmons, he corrects himself—about using her Britishness against them in a game of Scrabble comes so naturally now, and he doesn’t really  _do_ that.  
  
Natural, human interactions are not his forte.  
  
He wills himself to avoid those games in the future, and he decidedly does not make excuses to go to the lab to check on weapons he’s not at all worried about so that he can see  _her_.  
  
When he’s weak, and everyone else is in bed except those two scientists, who seem unable to keep a proper sleeping schedule, he watches them on the monitor.  
  
It’s a little creepy, and he knows that, but he thinks that if he can just see them together, if he can find some proof that he doesn’t have a chance in hell with Simmons, that everything will be just fine.  
  
He’s lying, and he knows it, but denial is his only friend.  
  
~~  
  
Sex with Melinda is good—great, even—but for all the pleasure they get between the sheets, there’s something missing.  
  
He doesn’t tell her that, of course, because it’s not her fault, and if he did, she might break his hand before he had the chance to explain that it’s his fault, and then where would he be?  
  
There’s no point in that, because he’s barely holding himself together as it is. He hasn’t felt this off-balance and messed up since he was a teenager, and he’d long buried those feelings of fear and loathing and inadequacy.  
  
The Asgardian staff is mostly at fault for this, as it has completely sent him off-balance.  
  
He’s losing himself(his walls, the very things that  _protect_  him _)_ , and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.  
  
~~  
  
On one of the nights where Melinda isn’t interested in sex, he’s drawn to watching FitzSimmons in the lab.  
  
It’s relaxing, and it almost always puts him to sleep.  
  
Fitz goes to sleep first, like he almost always does. Simmons works until she’s exhausted. She has, on occasion, fallen asleep in the lab, and he’s been tempted to go and make sure she gets into bed, but then he reminds himself that then she’ll know he was watching her, and that’s just creepy.  
  
He’s about to head off to bed, because Jemma starts cleaning up minutes later, hurriedly, as if she has something to do, which is odd, but not unusual for her lately.  
  
When Melinda May appears in the lab, however, that is unusual.  
  
It’s  _weird._  
  
It isn’t that they aren’t relatively polite and even friendly towards each other at times—they are. But Melinda had said she was planning on hitting the haystack early tonight, and that was a few hours ago.  
  
It’s weirder when she reaches out to brush loose strands of Jemma’s hair behind her ear.  
  
He’s not sure what to do with that, but he doesn’t have time to figure it out, because seconds later they’re kissing and  _oh_ that explains so much.  
  
(It doesn’t, actually, explain much of anything, because he’d had absolutely no idea they were involved, and he can’t even jump and point at the screen screaming that he knew it, because he honestly didn’t.)  
  
When clothes start coming off, Grant shuts off the monitor, completely missing the knowing look that Melinda shoots in the direction of the camera while Jemma isn’t looking.  
  
Jemma Simmons in the full blush of arousal is already seared permanently in his memory, and that’s bad enough.  
  
He doesn’t head to sleep, like he’d been planning before.  
  
Instead he goes to work out. He works out until he feels his muscles begin to scream that he’s pushing too hard, until he finally stops, or else he’ll have to explain why he’s so sore the next day, and that’s not a conversation he wants to have with Melinda during their morning sparring session, or with Skye during their lessons.  
  
He hopes that it’s just enough to knock him out, but it isn’t. When he finally manages to fall asleep, he sleeps fitfully, and he wakes up feeling like he hadn’t slept at all.  
  
~~  
  
The next day, he isn’t quite sure what to do.  
  
He does his job, yes, but he struggles to stay focused and calm at every turn.  
  
He can’t even look at Jemma—he’s accepted that she’s Jemma now, if only in his thoughts. He actually wills himself to meet Melinda’s eyes at least a few times, as if to prove a point, even though, as far as he knows, she doesn’t have any idea that he knows that she’s been defiling their resident biochemist.  
  
He’s also especially nice to Fitz out of guilt, because he’d probably taken out his raging jealousy on him a few times with pokes and barbs that seemingly came out of nowhere. Since that’s actually no longer even tangentially fair, he decides to make up for it.  
  
This is suspicious behavior from him, however. Fitz gives him a strange look, but carries on after Grant finds himself actually giving Fitz a  _compliment_. He even smiles at him several times, which just causes the clueless engineer to excuse himself at the first opportunity he’d gotten.  
Coulson tells him to get his head in the game at some point, so that’s what he does, burying himself in the case they’ve just been assigned.  
  
~~  
  
That night he and Melinda have plans—plans which predate him discovering that she’s sleeping with the girl that he’s pining over. And oh, he hates the word pining, but that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s stuck in some unrequited love swirl, in love with a woman he can’t have, and sleeping with the woman who can have her.  
  
It’s a mess, and he’s never been particularly fond of messes, especially not when it comes to romantic or sexual entanglements.  
  
And so, when she comes to him, he falters.  
  
He means to say no, or to confront her—about  _what?_  he asks himself when he considers it, he’d sound ridiculous, because he has less claim to Jemma than Melinda does, and there’s nothing against the rules about what the two women are doing any more than there’s anything wrong with what he’s doing with Melinda—but instead he finds himself buried between her legs, looking for signs of Jemma all over her body.  
  
There aren’t, of course, but this is the closest he’s ever felt to Jemma, and it’s  _wrong_  to use Melinda like this, but that only makes it worse.  
  
When he comes, eventually, he comes  _hard_ , and he’s left dizzy and breathless.  
  
She gives him a knowing glance and says nothing, and somehow he  _knows_  that she knows that he knows about her and Jemma.  
  
He says nothing, and focuses on getting her off again.  
  
~~  
  
He looks for signs of their relationship after that, but finds none.  
  
There’s nothing but kindness between Melinda and Jemma—and nothing special about that kindness, at that. They’re polite and  _nice_.  
  
There are no lingering looks or secret smiles shared between them. He can’t find a single sign that there’s anything going on between them. In fact, he thinks there might actually be more evidence from an outward perspective that he’s sleeping with Melinda than there is that she’s also sleeping with Jemma.  
  
It bothers him.  
  
~~  
  
Jemma likes to cook, which doesn’t really surprise him, considering that she’s a biochemist. She’s used to testing things out, and seeing what works. It makes sense.  
  
They often tend to fend for themselves, unless someone is in the mood to make food for all of them. That someone is almost always Jemma, because Grant likes to sneak into their little kitchen when there’s no chance he’ll get stuck in awkward conversations with Fitz, who has no idea how to cook for himself, because he’s always had someone(usually Jemma) to do so for him.  
  
He likes, however, to occasionally stop by when he knows Jemma is probably making food or eating, and pretend not to watch her.  
  
She likes to strike up conversations with him, which is his favorite thing about her. She’s easy to talk to, and she makes it easy to let go of his baggage for five minutes and just have a conversation.  
  
That is, she used to, because now he’s making pasta, and Jemma appears, and he wants to sink into the ground.  
  
Or maybe hide in a closet. That might work. He’s genuinely considering this when he realizes that it’s a moot point, because she’s already seen him, and his food isn’t done, so it isn’t like he can make a quick escape without her thinking that something is wrong.  
  
Being around her now reminds him of Melinda May, which reminds him that he’s a jealous asshole, and, well, it bothers him now, which just makes him angry.  
  
It isn’t fair that one of the few bright lights in his life has to be colored by this.  
  
“Oh, hello. Ooh, pasta.” She comes up right beside him as he’s about to drop the noodles into the water. He takes one look at her happy face and reaches to grab some more, dropping it in the boiling water.  
  
She pats his shoulder, thanking him. “I’ll make the sauce.”  
  
There’s something nice about cooking with her, something very domestic and natural and  _normal_.  
  
His stomach is tense and tight, and he’s not sure he can actually eat something without throwing up, but it’s nice to be around her, even if it’s ripping him apart.  
  
He’s not sure how that works, but it does.  
  
He loves watching her when he actually has an excuse to do it. Cooking is one of those times, because he’s one of the few people who have shown interest in it. The others are perfectly capable of feeding themselves, except maybe Fitz, but they don’t enjoy it the same way.  
  
There’s something relaxing about it, like knitting, or what he imagines the feeling of knitting to be like.  
  
She’s a wizard with the seasonings, and for some reason that makes him feel like he loves her more.  
  
He tells himself sometimes that he doesn’t even  _know_  her, as if that’ll make a difference, but it doesn’t. He feels like he knows her—he knows how strong she is, for herself and everyone, how awkward she can be around people(he thinks it’s cute, because he gets it, and he’s the same way), and there’s something about how she rejects magic so out of hand that makes his stomach clench. He knows she’s overly competitive at all board games, and she shamelessly uses the fact that she’s British to bowl people over whenever possible, especially during Scrabble.  
  
He may not know her favorite color, or whether she grew up with pets, but those kinds of things can be learned.  
  
He loves her smile, and how absolutely terrible she is at trying to mock him. He loves how fearless she is, and that’s _enough_.  
  
He realizes he’s completely zoned out during the companionable silence—something else he likes about her, because while she rambles on much of the time, it’s more like she’s trying to make up for all of the time she spends in her head, when she’s silent and focused on some endeavor, and she just stores up everything else for later, and lets it out in a rush.  
  
He realizes he needs to drain the pasta, so he does, hissing when his thumb touches the metal of the pan.  
  
Jemma immediately perks up at that, looking up from stirring the sauce. “Are you okay?”  
  
Grant puts his thumb in his mouth, squeezing his mouth down around it. He nods, then pulls it out. “Yeah, I just need to pay more attention to what I’m doing.”  
  
Jemma grabs his hand and looks at his thumb.  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
“I know,” she says, smiling up at him. “You’ll be just fine.” She pats his hand, and goes back to stirring her sauce. “It’s just a small burn,” she says softly. “I think I have some burn cream in the lab—“  
  
“It’s fine,” he says, cutting her off. “That smells amazing.”  
  
“Of course it does,” Jemma turns off the burner, and turns to him. “I’m brilliant like that.”  
  
 _Yes_ , he thinks.  _You are._  
  
~~  
  
“That was nice,” Melinda tells him, sitting up in bed and pulling her shirt back on.  
  
“Just nice?” Grant teases.  
  
Melinda turns back, rewarding him with a slight smile. “Very nice. But it was meant to be a segue.”  
  
“Oh?” He’s not exactly great at steering conversations where he wants to go particularly well either, but he’s not sure that actually counts as a segue. Since he’s still kind of stunned that he’s sleeping with  _the_  Melinda May, he doesn’t comment beyond that.  
  
“How would you like to add a little something different to the mix?”  
  
“Uhh-“ Grant sits up at that. “Depends on what you mean by that.”  
  
Melinda, looking like the cat that caught the canary, gives him a look that she gives him a lot nowadays, like she can see right through him, and she knows everything about him. “I mean adding  _someone_  to our dalliances.”  
  
Grant feels himself turn red, and so he tries to hide it with an awkward fake cough.  
  
“I thought so,” Melinda says with a shake of her head. “So are you willing to stop pining after the woman you want like you’re in high school, or are you going to let this golden opportunity pass you by?”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“Liar,” Melinda says with a shrug, crawling over him in his tight little cubby space of a room.  
  
“So, for the purpose of a hypothetical discussion,” he says hurriedly when he sees her hand on the door.  
  
“Yes?” Melinda turns back expectantly to him.  
  
“Would this third person actually be interested in, well, this?”  
  
 _Gotcha,_ Melinda thinks. People are too easy sometimes. “Yes.” She hadn’t been going anywhere—she didn’t even have her _pants_  on. It’s far too easy to get the reaction she wants out of him.  
  
Grant’s mind is struggling to keep up with the conversation, because they’d just finished having sex, and this, this is a little too much for him. “Yes.”  
  
Melinda gives him a curt nod. “We’re due for a layover in Nashville next week. I’m sure we could have much more fun in a hotel room then we could on the bus.”  
  
“I’m sure you could be a lot louder too,” Grant says with a laugh.  
  
Melinda chooses not to dignify that with a response, pulling back on her pants and opening the door, sliding into the darkness like she’s part of it.  
  
Grant just knocks his head back against the wall. “Shit.”  
  
~~  
  
Jemma wanders into the kitchen the next day while he’s contemplating lunch, and smiles so brightly at him he thinks her cheeks might crack from the force of it.  
  
“Hello,” she waves at him, which is actually adorable(but he wouldn’t admit that any under circumstances).  
  
“Hi,” he replies, smiling slightly at her, like he always seems to do.  
  
“What are you eating?”  
  
“Nothing yet. I haven’t decided.”  
  
“Ah.” She taps her fingers against the countertop. There’s clearly a reason why she’d come into the kitchen at the time when he normally eats lunch. “Melinda said that she’d—“ Jemma blushes a deep red. “You’re aware of our arrangement.”  
  
“Not exactly,” he says, feeling his own skin begin to warm. He’s an adult, he should be capable of talking about sex without blushing like a schoolboy. He schools his features, and breathes in deeply to calm himself.  
  
“Oh,” Jemma frowns. “We have sex, without any strings. It’s non-romantic in nature, it’s simply a physical—“  
  
“I think I get that, Jemma,” he says lightly.  
  
“Okay,” she says with a shrug. “I assume the two of you have a similar arrangement.”  
  
“We do,” he manages to say  _somehow_.  
  
“Excellent. Then this won’t cause any unnecessary waves, no petty jealousy or anything of the like. So long as we’re compatible, everything should be fine.”  
  
“What if we aren’t?”  
  
Jemma stares at him. “What if we aren’t what?”  
  
“Compatible,” he feels himself drifting closer to her, swaying slightly, as if pulled by some invisible force.  
  
Her, of course, he thinks for only a moment before he’s distracted by the way her mouth drops open as she considers his words.  
  
“That would be a shame.”  
  
He can’t help but agree.  
  
“Maybe we should test it out first,” she suggests, making him laugh.  
  
“How would you suppose we should go about doing that?”  
  
Jemma bites the inside of her lip, thinking. “I’ll kiss you, and we’ll see if we have any sort of chemistry.”  
  
“Sounds fair to me.” It sounds like torture and heaven all at once, but it does sound fair.  
  
She stares at his lips, hesitating.  
  
“Well,” he says.  
  
“Yes, of course.” She leans forward on her feet, trying to close the height difference between them, and he leans down, but she pulls away, frowning. “Hmm.”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“This feels too awkward and scientific.”  
  
“I thought you specialized in scientific.”  
  
“I do,” she glares at him. “But chemistry in a lab, and chemistry in a more natural environment aren’t the same thing. We need to make this feel for natural. A little less contrived.”  
  
“Sex is always contrived.”  
  
Jemma shakes her head. “Not when it’s good.”  
  
This, of course, means he can’t think of much else except sex with her. Deciding enough is a enough, he pulls her close to him, quickly, enjoying the noise she makes when she slides up against him.  
  
He pulls her up, pushing her against the countertop so that she can sit there comfortably. “Better?”  
  
“Slightly unhygienic, but—“ she blushes. “Maybe.”  
  
Grant puts a hand over her eyes. “Close your eyes.”  
  
“But—“  
  
“Jemma,” he says, and she smiles, but she acquiesces.  
  
“You’ve never called me Jemma before,” she says softly.  
  
“Not aloud,” he says, and she seems poised to open her eyes and ask what that’s supposed to mean, but he presses a finger to her lips. “Shh.”  
  
She’s breathing more heavily now, despite taking deep breaths to calm herself.  
  
He removes his finger, and waits, patiently, watching her.  
  
He enjoys the delicious tension, even though there’s an ache in his chest, screaming that he needs to kiss her.  
  
When he does, finally, they both melt. Her mouth fits perfectly against his, he thinks.  
  
When they pull apart, she blinks furiously.  
  
“I think we’ll be okay,” she says, her voice husky, and uneven, and it’s almost enough to make him kiss her again, but she slides right off the counter, rushing out of the room before he even has a chance to make a move.  
  
~~  
  
The next few days pass quickly, in a blur of minor things he barely pays attention to. Skye gives him a strange look when he ends their training sessions without her wanting to completely pass out, but he insists it just seems easier because she’s finally getting the hang of things, which is only partially true.  
  
After they handle the mission in Nashville, he finds himself with his head between Jemma’s legs, and he hangs onto that moment with as much intensity as he can, trying to imprint everything about her onto his mind, so that he’ll never forget a single moment, a single detail.  
  
He can’t imagine he will, but a part of him is afraid he will, because before he knows it it’s over, and Jemma and Melinda are curled together, and Jemma’s nearly spooning him.  
  
When he rolls onto his side so that he doesn’t think about how close he is to her, even though it isn’t the most comfortable position, she wraps her arms around him, curling her body around him and pressing her head against his back.  
  
He has to remind himself to start breathing again, slow and steady, before his body clutches and sells him out.  
  
He glances back, later, when her breathing has settled, and sees that Melinda is still curled around Jemma. He’s surprised, because she’s never interested in that after sex with  _him_ , but then his glance lands on Jemma, and he honestly can’t blame her.  
  
~~  
  
Jemma and Melinda’s interactions the next day are so incredibly normal, as if nothing has changed, because as far as they’re concerned, nothing has.  
  
Grant does not feel the same way.  
  
He feels like the world has fundamentally changed, and he’s the only one who realizes it.  
  
Later, when they’re back on the bus, Jemma treats him exactly the way she always has, even though he’s felt her writhe underneath him, and he knows every moan and gasp she makes on the journey to her orgasm. He knows her face at that moment, at the plateau, when her body shudders and releases.  
  
She still smiles at him the same way though, and sits and eats with him in companionable silence, and treats him exactly like she did before.  
  
His heart breaks, just a little, at that realization.  
  
Not that he should have expected any differently.  
  
~~  
  
“I don’t think we should sleep together anymore.” Grant had no intention of saying that, but yet those are the words spilling from his lips. Well, he hadn’t really decided, but the idea had been percolating in his head ever since the night the three of them had spent together.  
  
Melinda simply cocks her head to the side. “Okay,” and that’s meant to be that, but Grant isn’t finished.  
  
“That didn’t come out the way I wanted it to,” he buries his head in his hands. “Wow, I’m bad at this.”  
  
“Yes, you are,” Melinda agrees, smiling slightly at his discomfort.  
  
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. And I hope we can be friends.”  
  
Melinda nods. “Okay,” and she turns to leave again, but he reaches out and places a hand on her arm.  
  
“You were what I needed, and what we’ve been doing for the past few months has been good. Really good.”  
  
“I know,” Melinda says wryly. “I was there too.”  
  
“I’m just in love with someone else,” the words tumble out, and he feels like he’s been hit by a train, because he didn’t mean to say that either.  
  
“I know,” Melinda says again, this time sympathetically. She reaches up to run a hand through his hair, messing it up. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”  
  
“You did that every time we slept together,” he points out.  
  
“It’s not the same.” Melinda sighs. “We had a good run.”  
  
“We did.” Grant cups her face with his hands and kisses her soundly  
  
“Now that’s a goodbye kiss,” she says with a slight smile when they pull apart. She pats his shoulder. “Good luck with Simmons.”  
  
“What—I didn’t say—“  
  
“I’m not an idiot, Ward. Don’t treat me like one.”  
  
“I’m—“  
  
“An idiot, I know.” She smiles at him. “She might be more amenable to your attention than you probably think.”  
  
“Really?” he can’t help the hope that he hears in his own voice, and feels in his chest.  
  
“Just ask her,” and she’s gone.  
  
~~  
  
He doesn’t actually intend to make a move on Jemma.  
  
That’s not why he ended things with Melinda anyway. He’d ended things with her because while it’s perfectly okay to sleep with someone when your heart is unattached, it’s a lot more difficult when your heart is attached to someone else.  
  
He’s in love with Jemma, and that makes a difference to him, even if he wishes it didn’t.  
  
He does wish that, because it’s a hopeless sort of feeling, and if he could screw the feelings away, he’d do that.  
  
That’s not going to be an option though.  
  
~~  
  
After dealing with a breakout with super strength, all Grant really wants is his bed.  
  
The woman had thrown him around as if he were a ragdoll, and he has the bruises to prove that he isn’t.  
  
Everyone is tired—between FitzSimmons, who spent most of the last twenty four hours trying to find some kind of weapon to take the woman down, and Melinda, who got thrown around as much as he did, and Coulson and Skye, who look emotionally weary from trying to get her to calm down long enough to stop throwing people, they’re ready to collectively pass out.  
  
But Melinda is flying the plane, and Coulson is doing the necessary paperwork, and Skye is keeping the breakout company in the interrogation room, which is the only place reinforced enough to hold her if she gets emotional again, and Fitz and Simmons are both back in the lab, where they always are.  
  
He doesn’t understand any of them, because  _he_  wants sleep. But since they won’t be able to get it anytime soon, he decides to eschew sleep out of solidarity.  
  
When he falls asleep in the soup he’d chucked in the microwave to warm up because he’d been too tired to do much more than that, he wakes up to chicken broth and noodles in his  _hair,_ and Jemma of all people staring at him, trying not to laugh.  
  
She’s failing, because he can see her shoulders shaking with mirth. “What?”  
  
“Oh, nothing,” she says gleefully. “You should have just gone to bed.”  
  
“I was hungry.”  
  
Jemma narrows her eyes, studying him carefully. “I think you were more tired than hungry,” she says lightly.  
  
“That may be the case,” he says, taking the towel she holds out for him, and cleaning off the mess.  
  
“Fitz and I can never sleep after a mission, May can’t either, and Coulson won’t let himself, and Skye compulsively takes on the well-being of the, uh, gifted guests we have, because she can’t help herself. You, on the other hand, either like to punch something, or sleep, and I don’t think you’re quite well enough to punch something without falling over yourself.”  
  
Jemma slides into the chair across from him, staring at him expectantly.  
  
“I didn’t realize how tired I was,” he says diplomatically.  
  
Jemma looks disappointed in him, which is a terrible feeling, much worse than the feeling of chicken broth and noodles in your  _ear_ , which is uncomfortable to say the least.  
  
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he corrects. “I felt bad.”  
  
“Okay,” Jemma’s disappointment lifts, and he can  _feel_  it, and he’s pretty sure that she just played him, without even knowing it. “I think we all need a break from the bus.”  
  
Grant raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to try to cash in your SHIELD vacation time.”  
  
“I’m not sure SHIELD even believes in vacation time. I think I once heard someone say that when you get injured and have to recuperate,  _that’s_  your downtime. Until you die, of course.” She frowns at that. “Not a very happy thought. Before we decided to come out into the field, Fitz and I spent most days and nights in the lab. I don’t believe we actually left for more than a few hours at a time. I think we would have worked ourselves to death.”  
  
“You still might do that.”  
  
She gives him a considering look and then smiles slightly. “It’s different now.”  
  
“It’s different for all of us,” he says, because he knows it’s true. Melinda had been an administrator, Coulson has changed from all he’d ever heard about the man, though he expects that might have to do more with dying than anything else, Skye is softening around the edges with every day, and he—well, before this team, he didn’t have friends, and he couldn’t remember the last time he felt so . . . happy.  
  
Even now, when he’s suffering because of his heart, he’s still happier than he’s ever been before.  
  
It’s something to think about, he decides, when he’s feeling a little less tired.  
  
“I think it is,” he hears the scientist say. “It’s better now.”  
  
He nods. “Still tiring.”  
  
“But in a good way,” Jemma says softly. “I rather like it.”  
  
“How about the next time we stop for something other than a disaster, we take a break, go out on the town, and relax?”  
  
Jemma lights up at the suggestion. “That’s an excellent idea.”  
  
“Maybe we could—“ he sees the opening to ask her to get a drink with him or have dinner, to test the water, but then he’s crushed by her next words.  
  
“We’ll have a group outing. It’ll be perfect.”  
  
She pats his hand and jumps up. “You should get some sleep,” and she practically skips back to the lab out of excitement.  
  
He plops his head back in the soup dramatically, mostly because no one is watching, and it’s so incredibly indicative of how he feels at the moment.  
  
~~  
  
The group outing happens a few weeks later, after he’s completely put it out of his mind, preferring not to think about it.  
  
When Jemma brings up the fact that they have a  _perfect_  opportunity to the group, no one seems particularly interested except Skye—at least until  Jemma tells them that he, Grant Ward, suggested it.  
  
And then, out of more amusement than anything else, he imagines, they all agree.  
  
They argue about where to go, or what to do, and in the end they end up in a bar.  
  
Skye drags Fitz onto the dance floor, and Grant avoids her glance when she tries to get him to join in too, and Coulson and Melinda end up drinking off in the corner.  
  
“This isn’t quite what I’d had in mind,” Jemma says, sliding onto a stool next to him.  
  
Or, well, she tries to slide, but it’s rather tall, so she wobbles onto it.  
  
“You wanted people to relax.”  
  
“I suppose,” Jemma sighs. “I just wanted something a bit more stimulating.”  
  
“I think Fitz and Skye are feeling stimulated enough for all of us,” he motions to them, where Skye is smiling broadly and swinging an equally happy Fitz around.  
  
Jemma smiles. “You’re right. I shouldn’t complain, I should be happy.”  
  
“You should join them.”  
  
“But that would leave you all alone,” she points out. “And I’d feel terrible about that.”  
  
“You shouldn’t,” he says, teasingly. “I’m a loner, I can handle it.”  
  
Jemma snorts. “You pretend to be, but you really love us all. You like our company.” She gives him a dark look, daring him to disagree.  
  
“Sometimes,” he admits. “Sometimes it’s easier to be alone.” He looks down at his drink, which he’s barely touched, and frowns.  
  
She reaches out and touches his shoulder. “Well, when it isn’t, you’ve got the rest of us.”  
  
He doesn’t say anything, and they just sit there, quietly. The rest of the room is making noise enough, anyway.  
  
“It was your idea to go out,” Jemma says suddenly, as if she’s been trying to figure out a puzzle, and she just can’t work it out. “And yet, here you are. Alone.”  
  
“This isn’t what I meant,” he says before he can think it through, wincing.  
  
“What do you mean?” She’s caught the scent now, and she’s doubly curious. “You said we should go out on the town.”  
  
Grant stares at his drink, arguing with himself. “I meant  _us_.”  
  
She stares at him, confused. “That’s what we—oh.”  
  
He refuses to look up at her, because he really doesn’t want to know what she’s thinking. He doesn’t think it would be disgust, exactly, but he doesn’t think he could handle pity.  
  
“Well, that’s awkward.” Jemma sighs. “And now I’ve gone and made it even more so by saying that, haven’t I?”  
  
He agrees, but he says nothing.  
  
“You were trying to casually ask me out on a date,” Jemma says. “And I made it into a group outing.”  
  
“I may have been a little too subtle.”  
  
“True. I had no idea.” Jemma gives him a considering glance. “Okay.”  
  
“Okay what?” he turns to meet her gaze.  
  
“Okay, we’ll go on a date.”  
  
“It’s that simple?” He feels like someone just punched him in the head.  
  
“Absolutely,” she says, snapping her fingers. “Let’s go on a date. We could watch a movie, eat, and then you can kiss me outside my door and melt my insides again.”  
  
“What about you and—“  
  
“Melinda?” Jemma finishes. “I think she has a thing for Coulson, but don’t mention it, because it makes her quite cross. We haven’t slept together in weeks.”  
  
Grant smiles. “So, dinner?”  
  
Jemma smiles back at him, reaching for his hand and squeezing it. “We could start with the kiss if you like.”  
  
Oh, he really, really would. He doesn’t say it though, because it seems like a much better plan to simply  _show_  her.


End file.
